Liz Robbins & Sara Pedigo

field notes, oil on paper, 30” x 22”, 2012 /  Sara Pedigo

field notes

the girl in the sky-blue sundress with one strap
down watches as the tall man watches her–

in the background a brass instrument commands,
it’s the fourth of july, and in the periphery of watching

someone is forever bent over, and much further back
scores of dolls with blank faces, scores of unspeakable

plots . . . must we succumb to being children of such
disinheritance, love already escaping among the dried

wildflowers, legacy insisting the love song terrible even
for the most faithful, one leaving eventually, the night

sky, the parched earth . . . see, someone has set out
Chinese lanterns at dusk to charm the lawn, to guide

the watching, someone has set out drinks–


The Boat’s Floor, graphite and white acrylic paint on paper, 9” x 12”, 2012 / Sara Pedigo

ARS POETICA FOR A BLOCKED STUDENT

Dry-heartedness is not
the issue. Not only is
the heart there and large but
wet. It weeps eternal for a
nonexistent judgment day.
Movement, scooping pails
of saltwater from the boat’s floor,
helps. So does carving
your name in oars. Such things
take time, we were not meant to
burn but circle. Under the trees,
the green-wrecked trees–
branches and leaves dripping
a storm’s water–run tunnels
to the warm, dark margins.
Where if you wait, the gold
eyes of foxes open.

________________________________

Liz Robbins‘ second full collection, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith; her chapbook, Girls Turned Like Dials, won the 2012 YellowJacket Press prize. Her poems are in recent or forthcoming issues of Cortland Review, Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Grist, The Journal, and Kenyon Review Online. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL.

Sara Pedigo is a painter and educator living and working in Saint Augustine, Florida. Pedigo has exhibited throughout the United States, and is currently represented by Wynn Bone Gallery in Annapolis, MD. Most notably, she was included in the 2006 Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. A 2007 recipient of the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant, she has also exhibited at the Naples Art Museum, Jacksonville MOCA, and Cue Foundation. Pedigo received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is currently an Associate Professor at Flagler College, her undergraduate alma mater.